Instructional Enhancements to Improve Students' Reading Abilities.

It was not long ago that three of the four authors of this article were participating in an end-of-conference panel during which we responded to questions posed by several English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in the large meeting room. One particular participant’s question caught everyone’s attention, including ours. The question had to do with teaching reading and the small changes that teachers could make in an already full reading curriculum to help students become better readers. More specifically, the participant asked us what he could do in just ten minutes per week to enhance his reading instruction, not disrupt the established curriculum, and, more importantly, help his students become more confident and skilled readers. The question was (and is) a good one and reflective of most teachers’ situations. Most of us teach in language programs with already established curricula, textbooks selected by others, and exams to be given at set increments. In many of our instructional settings, daily lesson plans are provided to keep teachers on track, maintain consistency across sections of the same course, and distinguish one level from another. In fact, many of us have few opportunities to make major adjustments in the courses that we teach. But we oftentimes have at least ten cumulative minutes a week to bring in innovative classroom practices or modest instructional enhancements to meet our students’ ever-evolving needs. In this article, we focus on five types of modest instructional enhancements that teachers can integrate into their teaching to help their students become better, more confident readers. But before we turn to these easily adaptable instructional ideas, we juxtapose what we perceive to be common approaches to teaching EFL reading with key elements of comprehensive reading curricula.